Zambia post at last

My apologies for the delay in posting, but a combination of dial up access and lots of planned activity I am way behind on my blog posts. There will be several over the next few days I hope.

After a week in the UK and an eleven-hour flight I arrived back in Lusaka (May 10th)  after a 17 year gap.

The whole place is substantially different in many ways and just the same in many others.

We have a family wedding next Saturday and my son Al, and his Mom have made the trip for the big event.

The wedding is to be held on an island in the Lower Zambezi Game Preserve (just east of Chirundu for you Google Earth fans) and we will all be staying at one of the lodges right on the river.

The following week a much smaller group of us are going to a much smaller self-catering camp in the Kafue National Park called Hippo Lodge.

Zambia has grown from about 5 million people in the mid 70s to around 11 million today. The initial government after independence in 1964 was essentially socialist and a centrally planned economy. There were lots of state owned enterprises with the consequent inefficiencies and monopolistic attitudes.

Around 1992 a new president was elected and the currency opened up and commercial farmers and businesses were encouraged to return, or come to Zambia and start businesses. Many of the commercial farmers (principally white) had left at various stages after independence and gradually the country had got to the point of having to import even basic food items like maize (corn)

From that point of view and the general availability of goods Zambia is a better place to live. Has that positively affected the average Zambian family living in a rural village? I doubt it has had much impact, but the urban Zambians now have a much greater choice, and there is enough competition to help keep prices reasonable.

There are many more shops with a wide variety of goods and much more traffic with more modern vehicles on the road.

There is a fairly new shopping mall, which is in the process of doubling in size with the attendant traffic chaos. I like it as much as any other mall, in other words not at all!!

So on the surface all looks booming and well, but crime is rampant, although not on the level of South Africa from a frequency or violence viewpoint. HIV/AIDS continues to be a huge problem throughout Southern Africa and leaves many orphaned kids, often to be raised by older siblings, grandmothers, or in some cases abandoned to the streets. This is not a problem exclusive to Zambia by any means.

Zambia has diversified its export income, which was almost exclusively copper in the 60s and 70s, but now includes fresh fruit and flowers for Europe and wheat and maize to Zimbabwe and other local place.

Sub Saharan African countries have faired poorly on the world economic scale, and Zambia is right there with them. The “stars” in this respect are Botswana and strangely enough Rwanda. There is some good reading on the subject for those who are interested.